Neighbors take issue with hog facility plan

Tuesday

Apr 15, 2014 at 9:40 PM

More than one say they'll move home or business if confinement plant gets approved

Gary L. Smith of the Journal Star

WENONA — When Tim and Leslie Smith moved back to central Illinois in 2009 from Arizona to raise their family, they placed all of their assets into renovating a home that has been in his family for six generations.

“We don’t have a mortgage. All our wealth is here,” computer network engineering consultant Tim Smith said in the home near the boundary between LaSalle and Marshall counties where they’re raising two sons.

The Smiths had expected to spend the rest of their lives here. Yet they talk about leaving the area if a proposed large hog confinement facility gets approval for a site about 1½ miles down the road.

That facility will be the subject of a public hearing at 6 p.m. Thursday at the Fieldcrest Middle School in Wenona. The Illinois Department of Agriculture is conducting the hearing.

Longtime area farmer Mike Salz sees an opportunity for improvements to the land his family has farmed since the 1960s. But he acknowledged his tentative plans to sell land for a breeding and farrowing facility operated by an Iowa company have changed things among even longstanding neighbors.

“It has been a strain in some relationships. I find that sad,” Salz said.

Peggy Goulding lives near the site with her husband, Stephen. They oppose the proposed development on property of a neighbor for more than 20 years.

“Mike Salz is a great guy. He’s been a great neighbor,” she said.

The facility is proposed by Sandy Creek Lane LLC. The operator would be VMC Management Corp, an offshoot of a veterinary practice in Williamsburg, Iowa. The permit applicant is Dr. Nicholas Rippel, a Toluca native now affiliated with that practice.

Besides 5,600 breeding and farrowing sows, all under roof, the project would involve gilts being raised for replacement stock and young pigs, totaling nearly 20,000 animals, according to documents filed with the state. Manure would go into pits and then be spread on surrounding fields.

“My feeling is that it’s a way of improving the quality of the ground” by adding the nutrients, said Salz.

Salz said he would sell 15 to 20 acres for the project, and would not be an owner or otherwise involved in the operation of the business except for handing the manure removal.

Concerned residents include the Gouldings, who live alongside Big Sandy Creek, just across the road from where the project is proposed.

Stephen Goulding is chairman of the board of Oak State Products Inc., a Wenona commercial bakery that is the county’s largest employer. Apart from personal preferences, a key part of their business involves entertaining business clients at their home, Goulding said.

“The thing about most hog farms is the smell. If the smell affects us too badly, we’ll probably be moving,” Goulding said. “And if we move, we won’t be moving in Marshall County. We’ll be moving somewhere else.”

Salz said manure odor is a fact of life of livestock production.

“There’s no way around that,” he said. “Is it going to be horrible like a lot of people are concerned about? That’s a matter of opinion.”

Gary L. Smith can be reached at (800) 516-0389 or glsmith@mtco.com. Read his Northern Circuit blog at pjstar.com. Follow him on Twitter @Glsmithx.